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Fire Rush

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

London, 1978. Yamaye, a woman in her 20s unsure of who she is, but with dreams of being a DJ and MC. Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London where she was born and raised.

Everything changes when she falls deeply in love with Moose: he offers the chance of freedom and change. When their relationship is cut brutally short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her first to Bristol, where she gets caught up in a criminal gang, and then to Jamaica, where past and present collide with devastating consequences.

© Jacqueline Crooks 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

Critics Review

Remarkable... In terms of sheer lyrical force it stands head and shoulders above most debuts
Daily Telegraph
I was blown away by Fire Rush - an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer... Her mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to reread it
Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
Few have channelled so well the skittering beats and transcendent air of dub music as Crooks does in her semi-autobiographical debut... Startlingly vivid reading
Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2023*
A heady swirl of a novel that pulls the reader in from the first page... A fabulous, absorbing read
Maggie O'Farrell, author of THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT
A window into the dub scene at the time, with rhythmic, lyrical writing and a story about raving, love and the impact of police violence... Both a page turner and a literary novel... Truly remarkable
Vogue
A hypnotic journey into the dub reggae scene
Guardian, *Books of the Year*
This beautiful, sprawling narrative is wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence. Crooks' novel haunts but make space for hope as well
Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of OPEN WATER
A colourful, immersive debut... Throughout, a passion and anger resound as we gain a glimpse into a rarely observed British subculture
Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*
A brilliant, exuberant novel. Full of beauty, musicality and feminist power
Irenosen Okojie, author of NUDIBRANCH
A scorching, lyrical debut, soaked in dub reggae
Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2023*

User Reviews

Book 4.0
Narration 4.2

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